The salt air of the Indian Ocean was thick, sticking to my skin like a second layer of grief. We were three days out from the Island of Ghosts, drifting on a stolen luxury yacht that Barnabas had managed to signal before the sky fell. The boat was called The Seraphina, a name that felt like a mockery now. There were no angels out here. Just the vast, uncaring blue and the humming inside my skull that never, ever stopped.
I stood at the railing of the upper deck, watching the white wake of the ship vanish into the dark water. My hands were steady, but the skin around my wrists was patterned with faint, silver lines remnants of the runes that had burned into me during the harvest. They didn't glow anymore, not unless I wanted them to.
The Sovereign.
That was the word the archive used for
